There is something about the way Iran is dealing with Donald Trump that I find validating. It’s something that I’ve been preaching about since Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
It’s not complicated. It may just be the simplest strategy imaginable.
Trump has spent the last few weeks threatening Iran. He’s been making demands and then changing those demands. While begging for a deal, he talks about annihilating the Iranian nation and then tells everyone that the Iranians are somehow responsible for the fact that there isn’t a deal.
But the Iranians ignore all the noise and they keep coming back to the same thing:
You already agreed to a deal, and it’s the only deal you’re EVER going to get.
For months and months, I’ve been arguing that reporters should just keep asking Donald Trump the same question over and over and over again.
The Iranians have proven that this simple strategy will always break Trump. A few days ago they made it even simpler.
After Trump threatened to make a deal with them and to annihilate them at the United Nations General Assembly, Iran offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States meets its conditions and returns to negotiations. Iranian officials have said the proposal is based largely on commitments resembling the memorandum of understanding reached in June.
Trump’s response?
He rejected it.
On Saturday, he told reporters, “I reject their proposal.”
And that brings us back to the thing I find most validating about all of this.
Iran isn’t interested in chasing Trump around.
Trump says something new? Iran has the same answer.
Trump threatens Iran? Same answer.
Trump demands a deal? Same answer.
You already agreed to a deal. It’s the only deal that you’re EVER going to get.
Open the Strait. Go back to the agreement. Start talking.
That’s it.
And Trump has now rejected the off-ramp that was sitting right in front of him.
There is an obvious political dimension to this. Iran’s proposal was explicitly presented in the context of the November midterm elections, when high fuel prices and the continuing war are already creating political pressure for the Trump administration.
Accepting the proposal would at least have given Trump a way to say: The war is ending. The Strait is reopening. Oil prices can come down. We got a deal.
That wouldn’t have materially changed the inevitable outcome of the midterm elections but may have limited some of the GOP hemorrhaging.
At the very least, it would have given Trump’s ass kissing Republicans running for Congress something very different to talk about.
Instead, Trump rejected it.
And that is why I keep coming back to the same conclusion about the Iranian strategy.
It’s not 4D chess. It’s much simpler than that.
Iran found something that works, and it is refusing to change the subject.
It’s a little like dealing with the craziest person in your family who cannot be reasoned with, whose thought process defies common sense and who’s always looking for a new argument. At some point, you stop arguing about every new thing they say.
You just say:
No. This is my position and it’s never going to change.
And you don’t move. You just repeat the same thing every time there’s a disagreement.
That’s what makes the Iranian strategy so interesting.
Trump keeps changing the conversation.
Iran keeps bringing it back to the same sentence.
You want the Strait open? Honor the agreement.
That’s all you have to do.
Just keep it simple and sooner or later, Trump will get board. He will go away and he find someone else to bother.
We’re already seeing that with reports that the Trump administration to preparing to potentially attack Cuba.